Professor Roderick MacLeod:

We should. Not very long ago, a doctor from Canada visited New Zealand. That doctor's only role in medicine seemed to be assisting people to die. I do not believe that is appropriate. It is very challenging for physicians to take on this role. The challenge is that the physician involved should know the person very well, have a relationship with the person for many years and know how the person responds to illness and what the family is like. That is not required to be the case in New Zealand. There can be an assessing medical practitioner who only meets the patient on the day and then an independent medical practitioner who may not have met the patient before. If this is to be contained within medical practice, the challenge for medicine is how it is to be done. I do not see why it should not be removed from medicine. As I stated, it is antithetical to good practice.